The Desert of the Real

this speaks for itself.

Wow. Hard to imagine that it has been twenty years already since the Challenger disaster. There are of course memories to consider in all of this, and stories of personal interest, but mostly I find it irritating.

I find it irritating that it has been twenty years since that disaster, and we’re still using the same shuttles. It is still costing us an arm and a leg to fly missions. We still haven’t gone anywhere but the moon. And why is this? I’ll tell you why, it’s because it’s still NASA, and NASA is still part of the government, and government is “the least desirable, least effective, and least likely to succeed” (and I would add most expensive) means to accomplish anything.

As evidence I give you 20 years of NASA history. Then take a few minutes and read about the accomplishments of the X-Prize even in the few short years it has been around. Consider, where would we be today, if there were actual market forces in play? Perhaps, interesting and feasible plans like this one would even have a chance at becoming a reality.

Late last year I received an ipod as a gift from the company I work for as a thank you for some special work I did for them. A week or so ago, I was talking to some folks and got a few pointers to some podcasts to listen to. I have a long commute, and not nearly enough to listen to.

One of those recommended was Albert Mohler’s program. Last week I was listening when he chose to speak on the Oregon decision. His approach was slightly different, yet his conclusion should hae been the same. However, instead I heard a disappointing commentary with a negative view towards state’s rights and a lament that the supreme court hadn’t stepped in and made this a federal issue.
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The supreme court handed down a very good, albeit somewhat confusing decision yesterday in this case, in which the government was challenging Oregon’s pysician assisted suicide law under the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA). What’s really interesting here, is that this case mirrors a very similar case from last summer (Gonzales V. Raich) in which the court ruled exactly the opposite. In Raich, the government was challenging Californias compassionate Use act which legalized marijuanda for medicinal uses. The government won that case, with the court coming down on their side with Thomas and O’Connor writing dissenting opinions. It was yet another blow against federalism, against the sovereignty of the states in managing its own affairs.

So, isn’t this good news? Yes, it is. One might even be tempted to cheer for the new court, but before you do, you should know that the ruling in this case makes no logical sense, given the ruling in Raich. Take a look at how the ruling breaks down…
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This was a pretty good program, and there is much to be said about its content. However, it’ll have to wait for another night when I can go through it and comment as I go. I don’t want to misrepresent anyone.

However, this last portion that I watched demanded I come in and post. A caller from Atlanta called in, and asked Chad Allen by what standard he judged his homosexual behavior to be right. Chad responded with one of the clearest possible examples of idolatry, in saying that he judged it by the “god of my understanding.”

Then, he goes on! Who is this god he has fashioned for himself? Well, he started with catholicism, and then mixed in some buddhism, taoism, and some native american religion. Then as he struggled with drug and alcohol addiction he, “found a higher power that worked for [him].”
Yes, clear as a bell. A neon sign for any with eyes to see and ears to hear. Chad has fashioned for himself a God after his own image, and is bowing down and worshipping it in the place of the One True God revealed in Scripture.

Every time this man opens his mouth, some conscientous friend should shove a sock in it. If you haven’t already heard, yesterday Ray Nagin said, and I quote:

“I don’t care what people are saying Uptown or wherever they are. This city will be chocolate at the end of the day,” Nagin said in a Martin Luther King Jr. Day speech. “This city will be a majority African-American city. It’s the way God wants it to be.”

Stunned? Can you imagine if a Mayor of a city got up and said, “This city is going to be cookies and cream!” what kind of a reaction there would be? The outrage? The cries of racism? And then to go further and say that “This city will be a majority White city, it’s the way God wants it to be!” Wow. I’m pretty sure there’d be Klan charges flying fast and furious, and well there should be. If a group of people voluntarily congregate in areas where their surroundings are culturally similar that’s one thing. For the mayor of a city to try and orchestrate the population to be of a particular race or color is reprehensible. To claim God’s authority for something so ridiculous is beyond stupid.

Then, he hits backpedal mode:

“How do you make chocolate? You take dark chocolate, you mix it with white milk, and it becomes a delicious drink. That is the chocolate I am talking about,” he said.

Right. So Ray, have you been hanging out with Pat Robertson lately? That sounds like a page from his book. “Now, when I said ‘take him out’, I meant we could take him out to a nice dinner and have a quiet conversation! I never meant assassinate him!”. Riiiiight. And I have a pink elephant in my pocket.

Never fear, there was more than enough stupidity to go around at that gathering, as Hillary Clinton spoke as well. (er…unless of course she has now been named an honorary black woman) as she opened her maw to proclaim that “Washington is run by a plantation, ... (I think you know what I mean)”. Apparently, one of the few things that ISN’T racist, is stupidity. It’s an equal opportunity impairment.

I doubt you’ll hear nearly as much about this as you heard about his statements, but he did apologize and it at least is well written.

“My zeal, my love of Israel, and my concern for the future safety of your nation led me to make remarks which I can now view in retrospect as inappropriate and insensitive in light of a national grief experience because of your father’s illness,” Robertson wrote to Omri Sharon.

“I ask your forgiveness and the forgiveness of the people of Israel for saying what was clearly insensitive at the time.”

Given Israel’s threatening of his Christian Heritage Center project, and the fact that he didn’t apologize until they refused to continue to work with him on the project I think it is at least in doubt. His original comments were accompanied with nice words for Sharon himself, and given Robertson’s eschatology I highly doubt he bears any particular animosity towards the man, and most definitely not towards Israel itself. So I’m inclined to believe his apology is sincere, but sadly, because of his history it’s going to always be shadowed by doubt.

Now if we could just get him to apologize for the far worse crime of constant and consistant abuse of the text of Scripture we would really be getting somewhere.

from George Will:

Until the Bush administration, with its incontinent spending, unleashed an especially conscienceless Republican control of both political branches, conservatives pretended to believe in limited government. The past five years, during which the number of registered lobbyists more than doubled, have proved that, for some Republicans, conservative virtue was merely the absence of opportunity for vice.

Amen.

I have not had much time to watch the Alito hearings. However, last night my wife was watching some video so I did finally get to watch some of it. It was tremendously disturbing. I was not close enough to her computer to see and recognize the senator doing the questioning. Whoever he was, he questioned and pressed alito repeatedly on a very transparent mission to ensure that Alito would not in any way restrict the presidents power, particularly in wartime.

Worse, this judge used our prior actions during WWII in incarcerating japanese citizens as a supporting argument for his views that american citizens of middle eastern heritage might be held indefinitely and denied due process and access to our court system. I cannot tell you how dismayed I am to hear members of our government holding up our abhorrant actions during WWII as good government. Worse yet, to do so without protest.
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Dr White recently posted a blurb on the issue with the judge only give 60 days as well. An insightful post about the kind of philosophy and worldview that leads men to such a place. He also links to an interesting (and chilling) post from one Richard Dawkins on this same topic. First, I’d like to note some support for the comment I made on it the other day:

Ask people why they support the death penalty or prolonged incarceration for serious crimes, and the reasons they give will usually involve retribution. There may be passing mention of deterrence or rehabilitation, but the surrounding rhetoric gives the game away. People want to kill a criminal as payback for the horrible things he did. Or they want to give “satisfaction’ to the victims of the crime or their relatives.

This is exactly the problem with where we have gone. For so many people, punishment of wrongdoing is now about vengeance, or retribution. It’s no longer about deterrence. Granted, there is at least a measure of restitution inherent in our system, at least in some cases, but it has never been about retribution or even really rehabilitation. It has always been about deterrence.

The hope isn’t that the criminal has been rehabilitated when he comes out, but rather that when he comes out he will sufficiently fear the punishment that he will not break the law again. Unfortunately, we have removed many of the elements of prison that make it so unpleasant, and in the end we have often only made things worse when they do get out. I’m not an advocate for cruel and unusual punishment obviously, but I really don’t think that having cable tv and other such amenities is conducive to the goal.

Most peolpe today though seem to think of punishment from our criminal justice system as being about retribution. Dawkins is right, this thinking comes out in the rhetoric from folks when things like this happen. Sometimes even when a good judgement is handed down. People don’t want deterrence, they want vengeance, and it only plays into the hands of “bleeding-heart liberals” and men like Dawkins.

Now, Dawkins goes on to make the argument that the judge is right, that we shouldn’t be looking for punishment, but rather should just recognize that man is a machine, and that if these things happen then there must be something broken in the machine and fix it:

Isn’t the murderer or the rapist just a machine with a defective component? Or a defective upbringing? Defective education? Defective genes?

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Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing?

Now…I’m curious…where does Richard Dawkins get the measure he uses to determine that those “units” are broken? What defines for him that if you murder someone that there is something wrong with you?

I particularly found this amusing:

Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution.

Yes…that makes perfect sense. Evolution…built us to have a concept of evil, good, blame, and responsibility. Right. That makes perfect sense. Lets not accept the simple and obvious truth that’s right in front of your face. The god of this age has truly blinded the minds of unbelievers.

But, this quote also goes back to my earlier question. If, as Dawkins claims, we should just see blame and responsibility as a fiction because it was made up by evolution and isn’t “real”, and that good and evil itself are likewise a product of evolution, then is not the eventual conclusion that there is no good and no evil either?

In addition, in Dawkins post we can clearly see the chilling results of his way of thinking. Man is truly reduced to a machine. We are no more than a car, or a computer. We have hardware and software that breaks and needs replacing. There is nothing unique or valuable about any of us.